Lawsuit under way against China’s Chery

by Jil - September 24, 2009

Southfield, Michigan – A lawsuit against Chinese vehicle company Chery will now proceed, initiated by Malcolm Bricklin and V Cars, which originally planned to import and distribute Chery vehicles in North America.

V Cars, formerly Visionary Vehicles, originally filed its complaint in July 2008. In a motion filed in May 2009, V Cars stated that Chery, aided by China’s Ministry of Justice, took extraordinary measures to avoid service by refusing packages containing the legal documents.

“We have filed an amended complaint, which is stronger and more focused,” Bricklin said. “We will now aggressively move forward after a bizarre year of cat and mouse games with Chery.”

In a letter, the Ministry of China said that it refused to serve the papers to Chery because it objected to a sentence in the complaint that referred to the country as a “Communist, autocratic state.”

In its complaint, V Cars stated that Chery induced the company into giving it plans for a North American distribution business, then decided not to go through with the deal. The lawsuit, which also claims that Chery stole contents of a highly confidential product development catalogue, claims a loss of US$14 billion in potential profits and a $26 million investment.

V Cars said that Chery settled with Volkswagen in 2003 after it violated intellectual property laws by using parts from the Jetta, and settled with GM after it manufactured a near-identical copy of the Chevrolet Spark, which it called the QQ.